Citing my surprisingly popular post on the lack of much potential for Christian conservative “common ground” with Muslims, Michael Brendan Dougherty has a post at Enchiridion Militis, one of his many waystations, that includes an interesting use of historical analogy to put contemporary Europeans’ secularism and decadence in a proper perspective:

[H]istory is full of examples of decadent eras that were transformed into ages of piety. Late Antiquity was decadent and then bloomed an age of Faith. The depraved Renaissance popes were succeeded by the Popes of the Counter-Reformation. Regency England was followed by the Victorian era. But where Islam replaces Christianity there is no example of a people reverting to Christianity. The great Churches of North Africa never returned. The Ottoman Empire was erected on the corpse of formerly Christian lands. The lands that make up modern Spain were not re-converted in 1492 but rather reconquered by Christians. The pagans were baptized. And many decadent men of the last two centuries converted on their deathbed. Today’s modern pagans and decadents may do the same.

Whether or not one agrees with every analogy of decadence and renewal, the lesson is that there is always a chance for repentance as long as there is life. Surely it is not good for the prodigal to join a militant cult that practices a kind of “clean living,” even if he were to better himself a little in the process, as the cult ultimately dooms his soul and his hope of perfection by grace.

This also points to the need for mission. The pagans were not baptised because they all came rushing to the river to receive the grace of the Holy Spirit, but because holy men, monks and bishops ministered to them in circumstances a good deal more trying than modern Paris. Likewise the reconquista probably seemed like a fool’s errand circa A.D. 800, and the prospects had not improved all that much three hundred years later. To retake Europe from its spiritual barbarians will take generations, just as it took generations to Christianise the barbarians the first time.